Not Part of Video’s Script: An Arrest for Flying a Drone

Sean Riddle said the other inmates in the Manhattan holding cell that night were laughing — at him. Someone had overheard him talking to his court-appointed lawyer.

“They would say, ‘What are you in for?’” Mr. Riddle, 28, recalled a few days later.

He replied, “‘I’m the drone guy.’”

On paper, the drone guy seemed harmless enough. According to a criminal complaint, on Feb. 4 at 5:30 p.m., the defendant, Mr. Riddle, “operated said ‘drone’” in front of a building at 350 Fifth Avenue. Operating the drone created “substantial risk of physical injury to pedestrians,” the complaint stated, although no one was hurt.

Had Mr. Riddle operated his drone a few blocks away, perhaps he would not have spent the night in a holding cell with a new nickname. But 350 Fifth Avenue is not just any building; it is the Empire State Building.

At his apartment in Jersey City last week, Mr. Riddle explained.

Raised in Indiana, he graduated from the University of Kentucky with a degree in agricultural biotechnology and moved to New York City in 2012. He discovered his passion was in the nonprofit world.

Mr. Riddle became president of his alma mater’s New York City alumni chapter, a proud member of B.B.N., or Big Blue Nation, the University of Kentucky’s fan base. He helped plan fund-raisers for DanceBlue, the university’s charity for children with cancer.

He was hands-on. When he helped plan a Big Blue Christmas event at a bar on West 33rd Street last year, Mr. Riddle wanted blue Santa hats. He bought bolts of blue and white fabric and a Singer sewing machine and turned his apartment into a one-man sweatshop.

He had an idea to create an organization that could put people at nonprofits in touch quickly. He decided to make a video to generate interest.

The video had a plot: A man is trying to get to an event at a bar in Manhattan. He takes a helicopter over the city. The pilot tells him that to get to the bar on time, he should put on a parachute and jump. Mr. Riddle needed to film the descent from the man’s point of view, with the ground rushing toward the camera.

This called for a drone. Mr. Riddle went on Amazon and bought an Ionic 6-Axis Quadcopter Drone with a camera for $69.99. He flew it in his apartment. He said he looked up laws for using drones on Google and, satisfied he was out of the forbidden zone around airports, packed the drone in a duffel bag and took the train to Midtown Manhattan.

“It wasn’t the best idea,” Mr. Riddle said, “but I figured I had it in me.”

He saw some police officers standing near Macy’s and approached them. He told them he wanted to fly the drone straight up and let it descend. He said an officer replied, “Sounds O.K. to me.”

Thus feeling empowered with a municipal seal of approval, Mr. Riddle set the drone on the ground by 350 Fifth Avenue.

“Turn it on, start flying it up,” he said. In that moment, he unknowingly entered the extremely complicated legal realm regarding drone use in New York City, one that cannot be easily explained by Google and has led many an enthusiast to arrest. Steven Cohen, president of the Drone User Group Network, said last week, “The simple advice to anyone wanting to fly in New York City is: don’t.”

Mr. Riddle said his drone flew up to about the sixth story before the trouble began: “The wind takes it, and it bumps against the Empire State Building a few times.”

Not good.

“I let it drop, and it falls onto the first tier, which is like five floors up,” he said. He entered the lobby, approached a security guard and asked to get his drone back.

“You got some ID?” the guard said.

Later, while he waited, a police officer arrived and arrested him on charges of reckless endangerment. In an apparent misunderstanding, and a final indignity to Mr. Riddle, the police reported that the drone had flown up 40 stories before falling, a height Mr. Riddle had only dreamed of reaching.

Detectives questioned him at length. They had apparently seen his Facebook page, and asked, “What’s BBN?” in a tone, he said, that suggested they thought it might be linked to ISIS.

Mr. Riddle spent several hours in the holding cell before he was arraigned and released, he said. His case is pending. His drone is evidence. He returned to the police station to collect his other property, and the officer at the desk asked his name.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: Not Part of a Video’s Script: An Arrest for Flying a Drone. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe